﻿World War I in Belgium – of Memorials and Memoirs

﻿World War I in Belgium – of Memorials and Memoirs

A soldier’s diary makes history real as commemorations mark the 100th anniversary of the armistice ending World War I

A soldier in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry during World War I

All history is personal when you dig deep enough.

That’s why I carry a bulky loose-leaf binder on a recent trip to
Belgium. The country is marking the 100th anniversary (November 11, 2018) of
the armistice ending World War I.

The centenary of the armistice has revived interest in the woefully
misnamed “War to End All Wars.” During the 1914 to 1918 conflict, an estimated
18 million people died—11 million military personnel, seven million civilians.

One hundred years later, the death toll of World War I often seems
abstract. But the story clasped by the three rings of the binder makes the
horrors of battle real to me.

The pages are photocopies of the journals written by my
husband’s maternal grandparents: Patricia Stopford of County Wexford, Ireland,
then age 19; and Alec Ernest Saxton, a 22-year-old English lieutenant in the
Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry during World War I.

“I was the shameless hussy who followed the example of many
other lonesome girls and put in the ad: ‘Irish girl would like to correspond
with a lonely soldier,’” Patricia begins in her memoir.

Her request for a pen pal—placed in the London Times in 1915—drew a response from Alec. He notes in his
diary in April 1916:

“My ‘Advertisement Irish Girl’ has answered me… Already I dream
of a delightful camaraderie. Well, she is really Irish, so she may be pretty.
Her photograph should arrive in a few days.”

But for the carnage of The Great War, the two likely would never
have met. Patricia was an aristocrat, the granddaughter of the Fifth Earl of
Courtown. Although Alec graduated from St John’s College, Oxford, his
background was humble, his father working as a custodian in a London office
building.

I think deeply about the fates of Alec and Patricia as I travel
through Belgium. During World War I, this small country wedged between France
and Germany literally was the Western Front, which stretched 450 miles from the
North Sea coast to the Swiss Alps. As a result, Belgium has dozens of museums and
memorials that appeal to military history buffs.

In between visits to important battlegrounds and other sites, I
read Alec’s journal.

IN
THE TRENCHES AT YPRES

“Life
is very much the same each day in the trenches—unless you get wounded or
killed.”

—
Alec Ernest Saxton, Diary

Alec writes his war accounts with a devil-may-care jauntiness I
thought only existed in Masterpiece
Theatre scripts. Here’s another example:

“Saw
Carter today. He is back again for the third time; this time he has returned
minus a finger. He won’t get killed; he will only have bits chipped off him.
Next time he will lose a toe or something silly like that.”

War, however, was grimmer. Alec fought at Ypres, which the
British referred to as “Wipers” because of its unpronounceability for Anglos.
The front lines of the war ran through the town and other hamlets in
northwestern Belgium near the French border for four years, causing one million
casualties.

“Ypres
lingered on for a long while, until at last it died of wounds, in agony and
torment; died with curses on its tongue, with prophesies of retribution on its
lips,” Alec recorded. Even after a century, farmers often bring up
bones when they plow their fields.

Ghostly cut-outs recall the fierce fighting in Plugstreet Wood, part of the Ypres Salient

Topped by a glass pyramid and partially built into the
ground—recalling the trenches that made up the front lines—the Plugstreet 14-18
Experience opened in 2013. This World War I interpretation center offers films,
photographs, and maps that round Alec’s recollections of the bloodshed into
reality.

A visit begins with an interactive map that traces the start of
World War I. “What countries are you from?” the tour guide asks people
surrounding an interactive map. “U.S., England, Croatia, Hungary, France,
Russia, Turkey…” visitors answer. “This will show how you all went to war with
each other,” the guide replies as he presses a button.

The conflagration eventually involved 32 countries. It ended the
German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires, and caused the collapse
of the Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, and Romanov dynasties. And, sadly, it set off
the chain of events that launched World War II.

SMALL
PEACE IN A GREAT WAR

“Such
a lovely day today… the earth growing gay with flowers. And in the distance,
alas, those two thin straggling lines of trenches, which seem to lie like a
pair of horrible serpents across the horizon, fouling the land and bringing
shadows and sorrows upon everybody.”

—
Alec Ernest Saxton, Diary

A red poppy blossoms at St. Yvon

Red poppies sprouted all along the Western Front in spring. For
soldiers, the fragile blossoms symbolized the renewal of life amid death.
Scarlet petals bob everywhere in June when I visit St. Yvon, which witnessed
one of the most poignant encounters of World War I: the Christmas Truce.

On December 25, 1914, French, German, and British soldiers along
the Western Front staged an unofficial cease-fire, venturing into the
bombed-out no man’s land between the front lines to exchange cigarettes, swap
buttons from each other’s uniforms, and sing holiday carols. At St. Yvon, they
also played soccer.

Alec’s journal starts in 1916, and thus does not record the
Christmas Truce. However, other documents do. “A German looked over the
trench—no shots—our men did the same,” staff sergeant Clement Barker from
Ipswich wrote in a letter to his brother. “Then a few of our men went out and
brought the dead in and buried them and the next thing happened a football
kicked out of our Trenches and Germans and English played football.” German
forces also chronicled the event. “This developed into a regulation football
match with caps casually laid down as goals,” records the official war history
of the German Army’s 133rd Saxon Regiment.

The final score: the Germans won, 3–2.

Today, a simple monument placed by the UEFA (Union of European
Football Associations) denotes how the sport can bring people together: “To all
those who experienced the ‘Small Peace’ in the ‘Great War’.”

A
TERRIBLE INNOVATION

But
come hours when, ‘mid the stench

And
horror of a world at War,

You
lose in sleep the world of trench,

And
live as you once lived before…

Then
a shout, a kick, a cry,

‘Gas
is coming. Look alert.’

Fades
the vision with a sigh,

Waking
you to War and dirt.

—
Alec Ernest Saxton, Diary

The Memorial Museum Passchendaele commemorates the namesake battle that claimed more than 450,0000 casualties

Alec wrote several poems while on the front lines. These stanzas
refer to the first mass use of chemical weapons in modern warfare, when German
forces launched a poison-gas attack at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.

A half-timbered chateau set by a pond houses the Memorial Museum
Passchendaele, which presents the story of the namesake battle. Casualties were
massive—245,000 British, 215,000 German—for a territorial gain of a mere five
miles.

At the museum, I’m moved by displays of early gas masks, the
design an optimistic mishmash of canvas and what looks like a vacuum-cleaner
hose fastened to a soup can as a respirator. I wonder if their owners lived or
died.

Another section of the museum holds the Dugout Experience, where
re-creations of German and British trenches show the dank, claustrophobic
conditions where soldiers lived for four years.

COLLATERAL
DAMAGE

“The
result of this great sacrifice? Murder, insensate strife, hatred, the casting
off of all the guiding ropes of God, and taking the world into our puny hands,
to destroy all that was good…”

—
Alec Ernest Saxton, Diary

The 18th-century Gold Chariot used during the Doudou festival in Mons

A pretty hilltop town, Mons is best known for its
UNESCO-heritage Doudou festival, with the reliquary of 7th-century St. Waltrude
borne through the streets on a horse-drawn golden chariot. Mons is also where
British forces suffered their first World War I death (August 21, 1914) and also
their last (a Canadian soldier killed November 11, 1918, two minutes before the
armistice began).

But “war is more than a military affair,” according to Guillaume
Blondeau, curator of the Mons Memorial Museum, which opened in 2015. Set in a
renovated 19th-century brick building along a stream, it honors both soldiers
and residents of this region that was occupied by Germany in both World War I
and World War II. Small, personal items touch the spirit the most: copper
cooking pots, lucky charms carried by soldiers, and a crucifix fashioned from a
gun cartridge and a pencil.

Perhaps the most bizarre artifact is the proclamation issued in
the autumn of 1914 by German General Otto von Emmich. It reads like someone
declining an invitation to a ball: “To the Belgian People—It is with my
greatest regret that German troops find themselves compelled to cross the
Belgian border.” The document promises that Belgians would have nothing to
suffer from the horrors of war and that soldiers would prove themselves the best
of friends.

None of this, of course, turned out true. Some 100,000 Belgians
died during the war, 60% of them civilians.

AFTERWORD

“Bad
luck. I’ve been hit in the left hand by a piece of trench mortar.”

—
Alec Ernest Saxton, Diary

A cemetery for French soldiers near Ypres

Written in a wavering hand, that’s the final page of Alec’s war
diary.

At the beginning of the journal, he placed instructions that it
be sent to his best friends back in London “if found.” Meaning if he were
killed.

However, this story has a happy ending. To recuperate from his
wound, Alec is sent back to England—where he finally meets the Irish girl with
whom he had exchanged letters. Patricia’s autobiography recounts that first
face-to-face meeting at Paddington Station:

“When I… saw him standing on the platform
looking for somebody, he was so good-looking that I was scared to speak to him.
But I said, ‘Are you Alec Saxton?’ And he allowed as how he was… He had his arm
in a sling, which added to his glamour.”

—
Patricia Stopford, Journal

They married less than six months later and shortly afterwards
Patricia became pregnant.

Alec, Patricia and their family moved to the United States in
1919. He spent most of his career as a systems manager at Remington Rand (which
today has morphed into Unisys). Patricia raised their three daughters and
became active in community life in Monroe, Connecticut, starting the local
chapter of the League of Women Voters and running—unsuccessfully—for the state
legislature.

My husband, Peter, knew them as “Grumpy” and “Grummy,” kindly
grey-haired grandparents who helped him pick blueberries for morning pancakes.

I, who met them only through their words, recognize them as the
impetuous 20-year-olds who leaped into love amid death and destruction.

Alec and Patricia were married for 56 years.

Alec and Patricia Saxton celebrating their 50th anniversary in 1966

===========

SIDEBAR:
Museums, Memorials, and More

History comes alive while visiting battlefields and other military
memorials. People learn not just about heroes and evildoers, but also the ordinary
soldiers who struggled to survive.

Military tourism is an important travel segment in Belgium. Located
between France and Germany (formerly Prussia) with their territorial ambitions,
the country has witnessed a grim All-Star roster of battles over the centuries.

The most famous clash was also the briefest: Waterloo (1815), at
which British forces under Arthur Wellesley (later made Duke of Wellington)
defeated Napoleon. The fighting lasted about nine hours. In World War II,
Belgium was setting for the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German
offensive on the Western Front.

For
information about Belgium: About Wallonia:
belgium-tourism.be; About Flanders: visitflanders.com

Every June, re-enactors stage the Battle of Waterloo

Where to Visit:

Plugstreet 14-18 Experience [plugstreet1418.be/en]: Located near Ypres, this museum features interactive exhibits about both military and civilian life during the Great War.Mons Memorial Museum [monsmemorialmuseum.mons.be]: Recounts the sufferings of this town that was occupied by the Germans in both World War I and World War II.

Memorial Museum Passchendaele [passchendaele.be]: Exhibits provides an overview of the five battles of Ypres during World War I, along with life in the trenches.

Bastogne War Museum [bastognewarmuseum.be]: Innovative multi-sensory scenes of forests, cafés, and towns re-create the World War II Battle of the Bulge on a human scale.

Waterloo Memorial 1815 [waterloo1815.be]: A multimedia museum and the Lion’s Mound commemorate the decisive battle. Each June, people come from around the world to re-enact the military encampments, with historical costumes, artillery demonstrations, and cavalry charges.